Protected's recent activity
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Comment on Movie Scene Map answers one question: where was this actually filmed? in ~movies
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Comment on What's a show you love that's from before your time? in ~tv
Protected Link ParentI also used to watch Get Smart reruns with my father when I was a kid! Good memories. I only found out later in life how old the show was.I also used to watch Get Smart reruns with my father when I was a kid! Good memories. I only found out later in life how old the show was.
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Comment on How do you find new anime to watch? in ~anime
Protected LinkWe look at anichart at the beginning of the season, with mixed results. I will randomly watch something I hear about that seems interesting. And more formally, once in a blue moon, I just go down...We look at anichart at the beginning of the season, with mixed results. I will randomly watch something I hear about that seems interesting. And more formally, once in a blue moon, I just go down MAL's list of top animes (way down) until I hit something well reviewed that I've missed.
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Comment on OpenAI’s rogue agents were caught communicating via public wikis in ~tech
Protected Link ParentThe issue is real: Tildes has invite-based registrations, and those might be abused by agents.The issue is real: Tildes has invite-based registrations, and those might be abused by agents.
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
Protected Link ParentIt's good news that they're still working toward improving the feature, but if I'm reading that correctly that's still no good; it relieves the need to hold the middle mouse button, but you must...It's good news that they're still working toward improving the feature, but if I'm reading that correctly that's still no good; it relieves the need to hold the middle mouse button, but you must still keep pumping your arm/moving the mouse to scroll (that's how it works right now).
To work as it does in windows, autoscroll must drop an anchor and keep scrolling automatically taking the speed and direction from the vector between the anchor and the mouse pointer's current position. If the user is not moving the mouse pointer, scrolling should still be happening until autoscroll is cancelled.
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Comment on Taskmaster Season 22, Episode 1 - 'In my mind there’s a river.' | Full episode in ~tv
Protected LinkI love Chloe already, she's great! I imagine Richard is going to be this season's chaos gremlin.I love Chloe already, she's great!
I imagine Richard is going to be this season's chaos gremlin.
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
Protected Link ParentPerhaps your husband can install Bazaar on Arch. It's an app store for linux for browsing and installing flatpaks from flathub (self-contained software packages that run sandboxed, so it's also...Perhaps your husband can install Bazaar on Arch. It's an app store for linux for browsing and installing flatpaks from flathub (self-contained software packages that run sandboxed, so it's also more secure). It functions like an ad-free phone app store, has one click install for things and nearly everything I've searched for was there (including koreader).
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Comment on 1Password wades into a right-wing mess after funding a Linux project in ~tech
Protected Link ParentWhat syncing issues did you typically experience? I used KeePass on Windows for about as long, which was a bit of a mess locally (with Kee(Fox) for browser integration), and moved to KeePassXC on...What syncing issues did you typically experience? I used KeePass on Windows for about as long, which was a bit of a mess locally (with Kee(Fox) for browser integration), and moved to KeePassXC on Linux, which kept the same database but works better. On Windows the database was moved over SFTP (directly within KeePass) and it never, ever got corrupted. On Linux it's on a sshfs mount, which is much faster and so far so good.
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
Protected Link ParentI hope KDE Plasma improves their tiling support. It's really annoying to me how there are no corner targets between side by side monitors. So i can't put a window in an inner corner without manual...I hope KDE Plasma improves their tiling support. It's really annoying to me how there are no corner targets between side by side monitors. So i can't put a window in an inner corner without manual positioning and sizing (I could on Windows 10).
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Comment on Jet Lag Season 19: Japanorama | Trailer in ~hobbies
Protected Link ParentClick to expand spoiler. OK I just finished this episode. This is really going well for the viewers! They're truly neck and neck.Click to expand spoiler.
OK I just finished this episode. This is really going well for the viewers! They're truly neck and neck.
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Comment on Recommendations for noise cancelling, over ear headphones in ~tech
Protected Link ParentIndeed, it wasn't as important to me as to Wafik though which is why they might have been a good choice for me. (That is the model I shortlisted.) I truly believe Sony is the obvious choice given...Indeed, it wasn't as important to me as to Wafik though which is why they might have been a good choice for me. (That is the model I shortlisted.) I truly believe Sony is the obvious choice given what they seem to be looking for.
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Comment on Jet Lag Season 19: Japanorama | Trailer in ~hobbies
Protected LinkEp. 3 on Nebula Nebula has been malfunctioning today but I can access it at time of writing.Nebula has been malfunctioning today but I can access it at time of writing.
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Comment on Recommendations for noise cancelling, over ear headphones in ~tech
Protected Link ParentI can confirm most of this, although over the years my big head (and also cushion replacements) have beaten the XM4s into submission and they don't hurt my ears anymore. The only point where my...I can confirm most of this, although over the years my big head (and also cushion replacements) have beaten the XM4s into submission and they don't hurt my ears anymore. The only point where my experience was worse than yours was with device switching; I found the best way to reliably get them to connect to my DAC was to have my phone forget them entirely.
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Comment on Recommendations for noise cancelling, over ear headphones in ~tech
Protected LinkI was just in the market for new multipurpose wireless headphones (kind of still am) and spent a couple of weeks researching many current headphones and talking to several people about it. There...I was just in the market for new multipurpose wireless headphones (kind of still am) and spent a couple of weeks researching many current headphones and talking to several people about it.
There are two very distinct types of wireless headphones you can get. One is your typical gaming headset. It will typically come with a visible microphone, possibly LEDs. It's better at having physical buttons and software for controlling them from a computer. These headsets have two main benefits: They're good at delivering "no" latency/low latency audio, and they have better microphones, not restricted by bluetooth profile and codec limitations, so your calls would sound better with your microphone on. However, they also tend to require their own USB dongle for connecting wirelessly (since we're bypassing bluetooth). You probably don't want one of these.
The second type are bluetooth headphones from various brands that tend to be phone-first. Typically they come with their own app that will configure them from your android phone. Microphones aren't visible (they're the same as the noise cancelling microphones, I think) and calls will sound "worse" and have higher latency but it's the same for everyone else. You want to be mindful of bluetooth codec support and battery life. This is probably the type you're looking for.
Within the wireless bluetooth headset category, the Sony WH-1000 line appears to be unambiguously the best at noise canceling and should be the best choice for you. They also deliver high quality audio and they are actually competitively priced. There are usually replacement cushions in the market (speaking from experience) for when yours wear off. In addition to the Android app there are third party Linux clients for some models and others are in the works. Also, Linux supports Sony's LDAC codec (one of the best bluetooth codecs). Note that Windows does not.
Other alternatives exist with different strengths and weaknesses. The Sennheiser Momentum 4 are a direct competitor that may have slightly better audio and worse NC. I dislike the capacitive touch controls that both the Sony and Sennheiser headphones have embraced as they seem janky and failure-prone, but that's something I have to live with.
The Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra gen2 is another current gen alternative that's a little more expensive and has more physical buttons (only a less exposed capacitive strip for volume). I actually tried these, having found them discounted, and quite liked the sound. The microphone was also quite decent for a bluetooth headset, and it has a functioning third party linux client and support for wired audio and multipoint! The only BT audio codec it has with cross platform support is aac however, since neither windows nor linux support its low latency codec aptX-adaptive (see my linux pain points comment!) There's a slight hiss in the NC and it's bad at blocking off light rustling against the headphones themselves (unlike Sony). Comfort is OK; they're lighter than my Sonys.
To be clear, all of these headphones sound great. As long as you can use a high quality codec and are not in a call, bluetooth headphones tend to actually test better than gaming headphones, so they should be great for listening to music or podcasts while on the move. You can look at online lab test results to see their frequency response curves. Keep in mind that as long as an equalizer is available some unevenness is tolerable since you can always fix it yourself.
Other brands in this category that had models I shortlisted as competitive during my research are Bowers & Wilkins (there was a discounted model with sweet physical buttons) and JBL (the Tour One M3 linked in the article above). I was warned against AudioTechnicas. A friend was very satisfied with his Beyerdynamics but when we looked into technical results, their wireless models did not perform well. There was also an option from Fairphone, the Fairbuds XL (not earbuds despite the name), which had the advantage of being highly repairable as you would expect, but also didn't test super great at actually being headphones.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Protected LinkI've been playing High on Life! It's technically a first person shooter, which is very much not my usual thing, by Squanch Games (their last game before they cut ties with Justin Roiland). I never...I've been playing High on Life! It's technically a first person shooter, which is very much not my usual thing, by Squanch Games (their last game before they cut ties with Justin Roiland). I never bought it because I found the price too high for an indie game, but a friend not from Tildes generously gifted me a code for it that they didn't want.
I played Trover in VR back in the day and in some ways this is a very similar vibe. You play as a silent protagonist teenager who gets their hands on a Gatlian, basically a sentient gun, after Earth is invaded by aliens hell-bent on turning all the humans into drugs. The gun, Kenny, sounds exactly like Morty, and never shuts up (you can tone down the banter in the settings if you want). Throughout the game you acquire more Gatlians with different abilities voiced by other famous voice actors (all of them speak for you and at you) as well as other upgrades, and visit various planets to hunt down the alien leaders of the criminal organization that's behind Earth's invasion, the G3 cartel.
Like in Trover, the worlds are very colorful, the aliens are blobby and cartoonish and everybody other than you talks a lot and swears a lot. The sets (so far) look great, better than Trover and certainly better than I was expecting; the asking price was not unfair after all. The gameplay as you might imagine involves a lot of shooting, dashing and taking cover. There's a melee weapon you can use for close quarters stabbing and for swinging off... wasps (don't ask), adding a platforming dimension to the game. Everything feels quite polished, balanced and is generally fun to play, although I can't be sure if the combat would be to the liking of a regular FPS enjoyer.
There is a prevasive element of humour in the design of the various worlds of High on Life. Some of it is very Rick and Morty, which might or might not be your thing. I'd say this game can probably surprise and elicit a chuckle or two out of most people. I haven't finished yet but I'd estimate it contains some 20 hours of gameplay.
Voice actors from Solar Opposites are in this game and it's very off-putting!
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Comment on What is the oldest file you still have? in ~tech
Protected LinkI have various old files here and there. There are some backup CDs somewhere, but even in my Windows hard drive, I have some very old downloads, projects, etc. For instance, it didn't take me long...I have various old files here and there. There are some backup CDs somewhere, but even in my Windows hard drive, I have some very old downloads, projects, etc. For instance, it didn't take me long to locate my oldest IRC logs which appear to have been last modified in August 2000. I was a minor at the time.
Due to the loss of our entire PC hard drive in April 1999 caused by the Chernobyl virus , this is about as old as it gets (RIP QBasic games I made!) All older computers have died and were disposed of long ago, including a black and white laptop that might have had interesting files.
Judging by file timestamps, my most recent full/from scratch installation of Windows was in 2009 (probably Windows 7).
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Comment on EU packaging regulations land another blow to an already precarious tabletop industry in ~games.tabletop
Protected Link ParentI think the EU is a good thing in that it brings us together, and the overreach of its initial intended purpose doesn't have to be a bad thing either. I wish EU countries could be more integrated...I think the EU is a good thing in that it brings us together, and the overreach of its initial intended purpose doesn't have to be a bad thing either. I wish EU countries could be more integrated with each other.
We do have to stop sending our stupidest politicians to retire in the European Parliament though. Truly the Peter Principle in action. And the system is also vulnerable to misguided bickering from the member states and to the corruption, obtuseness, ignorance or just plain maliciousness of the national politicians and delegates making up the EU's other entities. I wish we could overhaul and streamline the whole thing.
The law being debated in this thread is garbage and in my humble opinion needs to be completely scrapped. But for it to have been properly implemented, the EU would have had to be more capable of overriding the national sovereignty of individual member states.
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
Protected Link ParentI've just made the jump after more than twenty years on the same Windows install (it's a ship of theseus kind of situation). The thing is, we have many years of accumulated Windows knowledge....I've just made the jump after more than twenty years on the same Windows install (it's a ship of theseus kind of situation). The thing is, we have many years of accumulated Windows knowledge. Sure, we think "it just works" but we effectively learned all that institutional knowledge over the years on the Windows side of things, too. So I think a little bit of initial friction is unavoidable, but if you ever decide to make the jump, you can almost certainly do it! And over time things get easier and easier, certainly most of the big things you need to learn, you will learn very early on.
The distro families that exist haven't changed much and you are still able to use the same "parent" distros for each that you could have used ten or twenty years ago. The options you have mentioned are specialized downstream distributions that streamline things for certain kinds of usage patterns, so it's a matter of talking a bit with other people about what you do with your computer and how you want to manage it. I think there is a very small amount of particulars that you need to settle on in advance: The system package manager and package repositories you are using, for instance, since you don't want to have a bunch of services conflicting with each other if you can help it. These are typically already a function of the distro family you have chosen, so if you have an Ubuntu distro for example, you can always use Ubuntu packages, even if it's actually Linux Mint.
Other than that you can just cross-install things no matter what distro you're in. Distro choice should in theory not restrict what software you can run; you can pick and choose.
So far nothing has required me to scrap my entire OS. Things seem much, much more stable and bug-free than they used to be during my previous attempt, and any past OS-scrapping (which I have done many years ago) was caused by misguided attempts to install conflicting packages.
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
Protected (edited )Link Parent@Sheep wrote: That reminds me, this was also recommended to me when I had an issue with a USB device! Very black magic indeed. I refused to do it as a matter of principle ;) I had a number of...@Sheep wrote:
I had to unplug my PC completely and hold the power button for a while to discharge residual electricity, which caused the motherboard to somehow detect it on boot again. This is the most "voodoo black magic" thing I've ever done with a computer problem and it baffles me that it was necessary (and also that it somehow worked).
That reminds me, this was also recommended to me when I had an issue with a USB device! Very black magic indeed. I refused to do it as a matter of principle ;)
I had a number of USB-related issues when I set up this computer but they all turned out to be related to MSI's BIOS (MSI strung me along for weeks and then blamed everything on AMD). Not Linux.
I also have no power management issues. It probably helps that this is not a laptop!
EDIT: I should probably mention that USB devices not responding can massively slow down Linux boots because it hard blocks the entire boot process until every device has responded or timed out (by calling
udevadm settle). This has come up. Windows boots faster in the same situation, and I've been told (take it with a grain of salt I guess) that this is because of how the way Linux filesystems are structured as a single tree make it desirable that every device is available or rejected before continuing. -
Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
Protected (edited )LinkI'm a very recent linux desktop adopter (even if it's my second attempt) but a magnet for problems. Here are some of them (CachyOS): There is no accessibility-friendly autoscroll in KDE Plasma...I'm a very recent linux desktop adopter (even if it's my second attempt) but a magnet for problems. Here are some of them (CachyOS):
- There is no accessibility-friendly autoscroll in KDE Plasma yet. Recently a middle click and drag method of scrolling was added which allows for scrolling more with fewer arm motions but it still does require moving repeatedly. Seems likely to get fixed in the future.
- There is a 17 year old bug in Network Manager's OpenVPN plugin affecting every distro wherein routes pushed from the server do not keep their network interface so they're all added to the VPN interface instead, breaking complex VPN setups. No one is fixing it. (There are also other issues in NM's OpenVPN plugin with settings it's incapable of retaining.)
- Wine's implementation of OLE copy & pasting is partial, which breaks copying and pasting in some old windows applications running on wine.
- CachyOS immediately removes older packages from their repository on every update. Whenever you want to install a new package, if your system isn't fully up to date some dependencies will not be found (obtuse 404 error) because only newer versions are available. If you do install newer packages but don't reboot, other issues may occur and you'll just be confused until you remember you didn't reboot. There are updates every day which means you might have to take an additional up to 15 minutes of downloading/compiling stuff plus a reboot if you want to install something else. It's worse than Windows Update! (a distro like Debian can go for many months without a reboot if you need).
- Keyboard shortcuts for clipboard and undo/redo are more standardized on Windows, where even the old MSDOS Ctrl+Insert/Shift+Insert/Shift+Del still work almost everywhere. I dislike the defaults in some Linux programs and I can't rebind them. It's even worse in terminals, which are different from each other.
- Linux VR stacks are still rough around the edges. Other than for Virtual Desktop (the VR headset program with that name, not the remote desktop program), Linux solutions are generally more performant than Windows, but lacking in choice and backward compatibility. There are little bugs and irritants: I have no full body tracking in Beat Saber anymore because Monado doesn't support tracker profiles for instance. I can't trigger the AFK state in VRChat. I can't fully configure my index controllers. Stuff like that. It's infuriating that SteamVR's official stack (with Steam Link) is quite limited and broken in some ways, including the desktop view being completely broken on Wayland. These people are about to release a new headset! Fix your shit, Valve!
- Games... work amazing. But the other day something mysteriously stopped working and the answer to why turned out to be "oh yeah, Steam is defaulting to Proton Experimental; that just breaks randomly. Reassign that game to a stable release of Proton" (you can do this in the steam game's properties, compatibility tab).
- Amusingly, nothing fully comes close to the feature gamut of Git Extensions for git repository management, which is software designed to be windows only, and which does not run very well on wine. GitFourchette is a similar alternative and they're currently adding interactive rebases, which is good news!
- Some proprietary or patent-encumbered devices do not have good drivers for linux. For example, the aptX-adaptive bluetooth codec family does not work on linux (fuck you very much, Qualcomm). There are ongoing effort to reverse engineer this. Others include: UPS monitoring (APC), CCTV camera (Reolink)
- AMD GPU drivers currently have some issues, such as occasional single-monitor freezes (recoverable by unplugging the cable) that log "[drm] ERROR (..) flip_done timed out". A fix seems to be "in progress" (possibly already fixed, still in tests).
- On Wayland (the protocol used by the KDE window manager), which has strict isolation for windows for security reasons, things like screen sharing have to go through a service called pipewire, which you interact with to authorize sharing/streaming requests from various applications. If the third party software doesn't have an interface for this, revoking pipewire tokens seems to be pretty much impossible other than by nuking the entire pipewire database. (Pipewire is otherwise pretty great!)
- The Japanese keyboard (Virtual keyboard fcitx5 + mozc) was weird to install and by default didn't have a key binding set up to change between hiragana and katakana that worked on a western keyboard; adding one was weird. You can't change keyboards when not focused on an input/editbox, so if you muscle memory your keyboard changing shortcut and then click the input, it won't actually have changed.
- There are four different package managers and sometimes it's not certain which one you're supposed to get something from (if any). The system packages can have issues not found in third party controlled packages. Flatpaks are much safer due to being sandboxed, but this can also break some features in software that requires system-wide integration. User-controlled AUR entries can be unsafe due to the risk of being compromised, but can also be your only option for keeping something painlessly up to date.
- Mozilla Firefox does not support HEVC-10bit codec profiles on Linux, only on Windows. What the actual fuck, Mozilla? I imagine this is likely to be implemented at some point.
- This is highly specific to my activities, but as a karaoke maker, it's troublesome that I have to run Ultimate Vocal Remover on wine and it can't be hardware-accelerated! I got it to run on Linux natively with great effort but it's strictly worse than on wine due to, I imagine, the Tk widgets it uses making the file pickers unusable (a recurring issue with "outdated" file picker solutions).
- Here's another highly specific irritant: KDE Plasma forces the taskbar color to be the same as the window background color (it's the same setting). If you want to use grey windows (like in Windows) the taskbar won't contrast well with the many system tray icons, which are all white, as is the Steam icon. You can use a third party widget to color the taskbar, after which it's the text that won't contrast well. The UI for fixing this is obtuse and requires enabling a thing that constantly refreshes the text on top of the taskbar. This would be so much easier if the taskbar had a distinct color in the theme! Come on!
- KDE Plasma has a fantastic system-wide push-to-talk feature. It's nicer than on Windows since it can purportedly capture the key everywhere, preventing its normal function and ensuring the microphone always reflects the state of the key (pressed/depressed). It works by muting/unmuting the device. Unfortunately, the device starts out unmuted until you press the key once and KDE seems to lose track of the keypress if you press multiple keys at the same time in some games (this is unrelated to the keyboard's simultaneous key limit). It's hard to reproduce under controlled circumstances but I hope it gets fixed eventually.
- You can't maximize Steam by left clicking on Steam's system tray icon. I know, it's a bit petty to include this one, but this is an issue people have complained about for years, and which they insist is not their fault.
I do basically a bit of everything on my computer. Seriously. Programming, gaming, spreadsheets, writing, 3D modeling, raster and vectorial image creation, networking, VR, audio editing, media center, real time chatting and cooperation, anything you can think of. (I have briefly experimented with crypto mining and LLMs years ago but since I'm not doing those things anymore, I haven't tried them on linux. Probably work great though.)
This may seem like a lot of issues for just a couple of weeks of Linux use, but honestly my outlook is optimistic. Most of this is actively being worked on; I'm also sure there were more issues I forgot to list but I've generally been pleasantly surprised about how there are people actively devoted to solving all the problems I'm running into.
Except for the VPN thing, the Wine thing and maybe some VR stuff. VR is an outsized source of frustration compared to the sum of everything else, but I've gotten even that to a pretty stable state, with some sacrifices.
And to be clear, the vast majority of things just work perfectly, no issues whatsoever.
I searched "The Fall" thinking I was being a smartass and they do have it! Every single spot.